MenuetOS sits in an interesting nexus between astonishing technical achievement and computerised work of art. The super-speedy, pre-emptive multitasking operating system is still, despite adding more driver support, more included applications, an improved GUI and digital TV support over the years, capable of fitting on a floppy disk (assuming you can find one).

MenuetOS is a technical marvel. Not only is it written entirely in assembly, it also shoves a fully capable multitasking operating system on a single floppy disk.

That is true.
Machines are today more than capable of processing anything.
But ... instead of having OSes faster, we have OSes that have no evolution despite graphics.

Windows is one example. xp->vista, windows7->8 .
Linux is another, with the example of gnome shell, for instance, having a *lot* written in scripting, uncompiled, languages.
There were times where the next version of something in the linux world was faster then the previous with more features. But now the competition is big for beautiful and *new* applications. Instead of just being good applications.

Bigger OSes also bring more capabilities. Menuet supports only x86. To support ARM, the size would double. How many archs does linux support? And graphic cards. and other hardware.
Of course, maybe this can all be optimized.

I used to wonder what-if there was a Linux desktop computer. You know, like an Amiga or ZX Spectrum, so the software already knew what it would be running on. No guessing the hardware, not having to determine the capacities, not writing workaround in case a few were missing.

A system could be much more optimized, faster, cleaner. And easier to sell to the common people.

In the case of Linux all that hardware variety is also one of its strengths and as it's also used on servers it's not something you can or should take away.

But how knows, a Linux for everything and a Linux for the Linux One computer?

At first, it was OK.....a rarely I could type faster than it could echo the characters (text mode) onto the screen.

Now, I have a dual core multi-threading 2.5 GHz on Windows 7 64-bit.

At first, it was OK....then came the security updates and now I can type much faster than it can echo on the screen (graphical mode).

So, from my user perspective, there has not been any real gains.

Oh, I forgot to mention having now 8 GB of memory compared to the lowly 0.512 MB of my first system.

To combat bloat, maybe developers should be coding on and using the average system users have at home or are forced to use at work.....

Small is beautiful. The main odd feature of MenuetOS is that it is distributed for a 64 bit processor (and closed source) while still targeting a floppy drive as real/virtual boot device which were last available before 64 bit X86 CPUs came to market.

Small is beautiful. The main odd feature of MenuetOS is that it is distributed for a 64 bit processor (and closed source) while still targeting a floppy drive as real/virtual boot device which were last available before 64 bit X86 CPUs came to market.

Brand new floppy drives are still available even today, although I've only seen external drives recently.